AppsScriptPulse

Bulk create Google Drive Folders and add Files

Bulk create Google Drive folders with optional files copied into each one. Also optionally add edit permissions to these folders/files.

Bulk create Google Drive folders and add files, from a Sheet of data

Bulk create Google Drive folders and add files, from a Sheet of data

The following Google Apps Script tool was developed to bulk create Google Drive folders with optional files copied in to each one, all from data within a Google Sheet. There is also the option to add specific ‘edit’ permissions to the newly create Drive folders of which the files would automatically inherit this access level.

Key Functionality:

  • Complete the necessary information in the Config sheet before proceeding. Then use the Create folders option from the Admin menu at the top of the Google Sheet.
  • Adding permissions is optional – use the Config sheet to change the dropdown as required. If you select ‘No’ then the usual Google Drive inheritance will occur based on the parent Google Drive folder.
  • You can add multiple File IDs into the relevant cell and they can be different for each row. Leaving this cell blank/empty means no files will attempt to be copied into the new folder.
  • The original filename will be updated during the copy to append the folder name to the end of it, in order to prevent creating a large number of files with identical names.
  • There is a Log sheet to help troubleshoot any errors which may occur when running the tool.

Source: The Gift of Script: Bulk create Google Drive Folders and add Files

Visually code Google Apps Script with Teacher Blocks

This is a quick discussion of how teacher can respond to student work using block based coding.

This is a very interesting prototype which makes it easier for users to visually develop Google Apps Script code. Developed by Stephen Callahan as part of a Google Innovator Project, TeacherBlocks lets to drag and drop blocks to design your code and automatically create the required script to copy/paste into your Google Doc. Watch the video to see it in action or visit the source link to try it yourself.

Source: Teacher BlocksĀ 

How to Find and Replace Text in Google Docs with RegEx Search Patterns – Digital Inspiration

It is easy to search and replace text in Google Documents with the DocumentApp service of Google Apps Script. You can use use findText method with simple regular expressions to find text elements in the document that match a pattern and replace them with the specified text. All well and good but in some cases, this simple search and replace function may fail if the search text does not transform into a valid regular expression.

Some more regex goodness this time from Amit Agarwal who provides some very useful tips on escaping characters when using the DocumentApp service and findText method. Click through to the source link for more details.

Source: How to Find and Replace Text in Google Docs with RegEx Search Patterns – Digital Inspiration

Extract text from multiple Google Docs into a Sheet

The following Google Apps Script is designed to iterate through Google Docs in a given Google Drive folder and extract the paragraphs of text along with a link to each file into a Google Sheet. A new column will automatically be appended for each paragraph.

This tool was designed with the vision that you may wish to centrally collate some comments/feedback written by others in Docs, into one central location so you do not need to open each file in turn.

Provide a Google Folder ID to extract text from Docs

Provide a Google Folder ID to extract text from Docs

Source: The Gift of Script: Extract text from multiple Google Docs into a Sheet

Check/uncheck the entire checklist in Google Docs with Google Apps Script

Currently it is unknown if the checklist can be manipulated in Docs. Clark Lind suggests to replace a list item with a copy of one of them (which is in expected state ā€“ check/uncheck)

A nice example of the Google Apps Script developer community helping each other out. In this case Alexander Ivanov was looking for a way to interact with the new Google Docs checklist feature. A direct way to interact with these isn’t possible but some clever coding from Alex demonstrates what is currently possible.

Source: Uncheck a checklist

How to Change the Font in your Google Documents with Apps Script – Digital Inspiration

How to change the font family and font styles of multiple Word documents in your Google Drive with Apps Script. This example show how to replace the font family of your Google Documents of specific sections – the heading titles are rendered in a different font while the tables, list items, body and table of contents are formatted with a separate font.

Source: How to Change the Font in your Google Documents with Apps Script – Digital Inspiration

How to find and replace text in a Google Doc with a link or a list of links with Google Apps Script – Yagisanatode

Learn how to find and replace text with a link in Google Docs with Google Apps Script Document App with 3 different scenarios.

So you are a citizen Google Apps Script developer and youā€™ve decided to make yourself a mail-merge-type project where you want to create new documents from a template. … Now you want to take it to the next level and replace the text with a hyperlink containing the text and the URL. You might be scratching your head wondering where theĀ replaceTextWithLink()Ā method is or why you canā€™t simply chain theĀ setLinkUrl() method without making a hyperlink out of the entire body of the document.

Another one of Scott Donald’s very thorough tutorials, this one exploring link creation in Google Docs.

Source: How to find and replace text in a Google Doc with a link or a list of links with Google Apps Script – Yagisanatode

Content generation with Google Workspace Add-ons

Google Workspace Add-ons

Image credit: Google

Back when G Suite, errā€¦ Google Workspace Add-ons launched, support for Docs, Sheets, and Slides was conspicuously absent. Sure, theyā€™ve long supported their own flavor of add-ons, but the idea of building an add-on two different ways didnā€™t sit well with me. Thankfully I didnā€™t have to wait too long for the editors to catch up. … Now that add-ons work in the editors I had the chance to build a few small demos to try them out.

Recently it was announced that Google Workspace Add-ons now support the extension of the Editors (Docs, Sheets and Slides). Steven Bazyl (Google, DevRel) has shared an overview to help you get started with Workspace Add-ons. The examples Steven shares are particularly useful if you want to start developing add-ons that work across editors as well as in Gmail. This post is particularly useful for tips on handling different host applications. Follow the link to the source for all the code and more details…

Source: Content generation with Google Workspace Add-ons

Create PDF from a Google Form submission using Google Apps Script

In this blog post , we will cover how to create a PDF from the responses of Google Form using Google Apps Script.

If you are looking for some guidance on creating and sending PDF Documents from Google Form responses this post has all you need to get started.

Source: Create PDF Using GoogleApps Script

New Google Apps Script library for working with Google Docs, MS Word, Google Sheets, MS Excel and Google Slides when core/advanced service methods are not availableĀ 

This is a Google Apps Script library for supporting Document service, Docs API, Spreadsheet service, Sheets API, Slides service and Slides API. The aim of this library is to compensate the processes that they services cannot achieve.

The purpose of this contribution from Tanaike is to extend Google Apps Script to interact with certain types of Google Drive files using methods not included in the existing core or advanced services. Features worth noting are:

  • Google Docs:
    • Retrieve table width and column width from the table. The tables inserted with the default width are included.
  • Google Sheets:
    • Retrieve all images in Google Spreadsheet as an object including the cell range and image blob.
    • Retrieve all comments in Google Spreadsheet as an object including the cell range and comments.
    • Insert images in cells of Google Spreadsheet using the image blob.
    • Create new Google Spreadsheet by setting the custom header and footer.
  • Microsoft Word:
    • Retrieve table width and column width.
  • Microsoft Excel:
    • Retrieve all values and formulas of the cells.
    • Retrieve all sheet names.
    • Retrieve all images as an object including the cell range and image blob.
    • Retrieve all comments as an object including the cell range and comments.

For more details about this library visit the source on Github

Source: tanaikech/DocsServiceApp